I Hired Elite Tycoons as My Parents for Five Cents Chapter 10
The crowd’s fury boxed the Strattons in. None of them could look up
Richard and Evelyn were shaking. When they finally looked at me, their eyes held something I hadn’t seen before-guilt, regret, and something that might have been grief.
It had never occurred to them that the daughter they’d lost had been thrown away at three. That she’d survived on garbage. That the only home she’d ever found cost fifty cents.
And when she finally came back to them, they’d thrown her away all over again.
Their lips were shaking when they spoke.
“Hazel, we failed you. We let you suffer, and there’s no excuse for it… we were wrong. We’ll spend the rest of
our lives making it right. We swear.”
Trenton and Caleb stood there with their faces burning, wishing the floor would open up and swallow them.
Neither of them said a word.
Brooke stood in the middle of it all, white as paper, the crowd’s stares burning into her from every direction.
Everyone was tearing her apart. And the two people who’d always shielded her, Richard and Evelyn, weren’t even looking at her anymore. Their eyes were only on me.
The humiliation, the loss, the hatred-something inside her snapped.
Her eyes were wild. They landed on the scalpel lying on the floor a few feet away.
She lunged for it, scooped it up, and came at me screaming.
“This is your fault! You took everything from me, Hazel! I’ll kill you!”
Stella moved faster. She stepped in front of me and drove her boot straight into Brooke’s stomach.
The impact sent Brooke flying. She hit the floor hard, and the scalpel clattered out of her grip.
But she wasn’t done. She clawed across the floor toward the blade, dragging herself up.
Evelyn threw herself at Brooke, grabbing at her arms, sobbing. “Brooke, stop! Don’t make this worse!”
But Brooke was past hearing anything.
In the struggle, the scalpel sank into Evelyn’s side.
Evelyn gasped. Blood bloomed through her clothes, and she crumpled to the floor.
“You turned on me too! All of you-you all chose her! You’re the ones who betrayed me!”
Brooke stood over Evelyn, screaming, the bloody blade cutting through the air. She’d lost her mind
completely.
The crowd screamed and scattered The hallway dissolved into chaos
That’s when the police arrived.
Officers swarmed Brooke, wrestled the knife away, and cuffed her. They took Richard, Trenton, and Caleb
with them.
Evelyn was rushed into an emergency operating room.
She didn’t make it.
Her body was already failing from the kidney disease. The blade hit her spleen, and the hemorrhage was too
fast, too much. There was nothing anyone could do.
The last word on her lips, over and over, was Brooke.
This time, I felt nothing.
Because I already had the parents who loved me. The ones who would burn the world down to keep me safe.
Brooke was charged with murder. She was sentenced to life without parole.
Richard, Trenton, and Caleb were convicted of attempted forced organ removal and assault. Five years each.
Every last Stratton went to prison.
The Rossi family made a single phone call. By morning, the Stratton empire had been liquidated. Bankrupt, dissolved, erased from Oakhaven like it had never existed.
When my bruises healed, Stella dragged me to her favorite custom tailor in Oakhaven and had them fit me for a studded leather jacket to match hers.
She smirked, popped my collar like she owned the world, and leaned in.
“Now we match. I dare anyone to try messing with my daughter again.”
I smiled at my reflection.
Heavy leather, sharp lines, announcing to anyone who looked that I belonged somewhere.
It felt like home.
